


Tales from the Ironbelly

by Zampano



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Bloodplay, I forgot how AO3 works, Implied canon divergence in the future but not in this fic, M/M, Under-negotiated Kink, Wizarding Bondage Clubs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-12
Updated: 2019-01-12
Packaged: 2019-10-09 01:17:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17397311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zampano/pseuds/Zampano
Summary: James M. S. Vandermeer is a renowned Hematomancer. Albus Dumbledore is in need of his services.





	Tales from the Ironbelly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kierkegarden](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kierkegarden/gifts).



> Belated Christmas gift for [Kierkegarden](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kierkegarden/pseuds/Kierkegarden). ♥ It's kind of an exchange with their own [much less upsetting fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17231747). This is a dead dove and you should probably not eat it.

**1.**

There’s a certain poetry to this, James M.S. Vandermeer muses, as he traces the tip of his wand over the inkblot stain of pixie blood over weathered parchment. Hematomancy tends to speak in loud pictures, signifiers demanding rather than divining what they could of destiny, which holds a certain appeal for those of the more dominant sort. Hematomancy doesn’t spell out the future as much as it commands it, but it does take a strong will and a stronger hand to coax out its secrets, a scrying that calls for cruelty more than it does for the passivity of a Seer.

Vandermeer turns the book to a fresh page, yellowed paper bearing only the faint traces of bright blue blood seeping through from the prior blot. The gilded cage on his table is all aflutter with a panic of cornish pixies, the creatures silenced and the cage enchanted. Vandermeer reaches in through the golden bars and grabs hold of the next one.

There’s a brief struggle as he presses the pixie down onto the page, before he slams the book shut.

He picks off the carcass before he reads the resulting stain.

It’s very interesting.

 

**2.**

Divination however, isn’t Vandermeer’s preferred métier. It’s eleven o’clock, the skies of London a hollow and starless black as Vandermeer plods down the crooked cobblestones of Knockturn Alley, heading past store windows whose occupants occasionally react to his presence. Some scuttle and hide, but more than a few respond with familiarity; a spellbook opens itself, pages splaying themselves out and ruffling as though in invitation. The needles of an Expectograph swivel back around to twelve o’clock, before resuming ticking forth as he crosses its invisible threshold.

The six-foot tall statue of the Ukrainian Ironbelly, almost as large as Vandermeer himself, sits poised high and regal between the facades of Coffin House and Moribund’s. Every now and then, it ducks its brass-cast head to nuzzle at the scales of its own flank, scratching an impossible itch in the verdigris casing its body.

Vandermeer conjures himself up a carafe of Firewhiskey, and waits.

He almost misses his mark when he does arrive. For a moment, Vandermeer is surprised when the boy’s eyes catch sight of the dragon, but as he walks closer Vandermeer realizes that he does look old enough to bypass the age-determinant concealment charm placed upon the Ironbelly. Just barely, with his slight frame and auburn hair falling to a little past his shoulders, the balloon sleeves of his shirt in his oversized vest making him look more waifish than he probably is.

Vandermeer still has his doubts, but when the boy reaches up after a bit of reckoning to place his hand on the Ironbelly’s snout, they disapparate into the wind. The dragon raises its tail to uncover the dimly lit passage that leads to the large, black building of the Ironbelly Club, and when the boy walks down the path, Vandermeer follows. It is, after all, where he works.

 

**3.**

The inside of the Ironbelly Club is a cavern, the void inside a beast. Vandermeer had never held much affection for the dancefloor that spanned most of its visible flooring, the music within its enchanted auditory bubble nothing short of a torment Vandermeer wouldn’t inflict even on his most demanding clients. The boy stands right on the edge of its hemisphere, bathed in the rippling violet light of the enchanted flames that circle the dancefloor. Up this close, he looks haunted.

He pulls a bronze compass out of his vest. The hand spins around in frantic indecision before it points at the bar with its gaggle of witches and wizards milling around it and sipping away at their fancy. Vandermeer doesn’t miss the myriad sets of eyes following the boy, roving over his pale skin and lithe frame and unsuitable clothes -- for the venue, at any rate -- before they take note of Vandermeer and quickly avert their gazes, writing the boy off as claimed prey. Vandermeer stalks him across the hall.

 

**4.**

“You know what you need?” says Gobkey, the bartender. “A little bit of Re’em blood drizzled over a Wizard’s Brew. It’ll pick you right up, put some whim into those bones.”

The boy frowns at his compass, which still points resolutely towards the display of various intoxicants and potions behind the counter. It’s then Gobkey catches Vandermeer’s eye and takes a step back in deference, before summoning him up a glass of Firewhiskey. Vandermeer takes the stool next to the boy and watches him like a vulture. The bloodstains had spelled potential. Enough to unravel the strings of fate and pull the world apart before knitting it back together again, into a tapestry fashioned far from the old. 

“Perhaps you’re not wrong,” says the boy. “Though, hold the Re’em blood if you will, thank you.”

Gobkey serves him his drink, abstaining from adding any of what Vandermeer knows very well to be counterfeit Re’em blood. The compass, now on the table, spins around after the boy takes his first sip, and points at --

Well. Vandermeer.

“Ah,” says the boy, turning to Gobkey. “I’d also be looking for a James Vandermeer. I believe this is his place of business?”

Vandermeer takes a deep sip of his Firewhiskey before leaning into the table. “You know, Predilectors are highly unreliable. One needs a steady mind to even get those bloody things to know what you want at the moment.”

The boy smiles at him. There’s something in the depths of that smile that fascinates Vandermeer, something deadly, or more likely, dead. “Enchanted,” he says. “I’m Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore. I come from Godric’s Hollow, and I must bother you for a little of your time.”

“Privacy tables in the back,” says Vandermeer. “That’s where you draw up the contracts.”

 

**5.**

The privacy tables are shrouded in a blackness thick as fog, obscuring them from the rest of the club. Through the haze, the violet flames almost seem like distant pinpricks of light dancing on the horizon. The candle on the table burns bright enough to cast deep shadows over Albus’ face, and Vandermeer can almost see all the ghosts he appears to house inside his bones.

There’s a chaos to it, even as takes his wand out with calculated grace, long fingers closing around a wand made of what Vandermeer recognizes as hazel wood. Sensitive, temperamental, and far too conductive of its owner’s emotions. He wonders what lies at its core; wonders what Albus is made of.

He figures he’s going to find out. He places his hand on the mahongany of the table, and a copy of the Ironbelly’s Communication Contract rises out of the surface, paper crinkling against his palm as he extricates it. Albus watches it, wand in hand, and then gently clears his throat.

“Actually,” he says. “I’m very sorry to disappoint, but I’m here for much less exciting affairs.”

Vandermeer stops.

“I’m aware you’re a lauded hematomancer,” Albus continues. “Your fame precedes you within similarly inclined circles. James Maria Saturna Vandermeer, nicknamed the Redwood for your excellent if unconventional work with blood magic. Spellcrafted the Cruorus curse. Invented the Claret Siphon. Patented the use of dilute salamander blood in Wiggenweld potions -- or sorry, is that premature?”

“I, uh, well,” says Vandermeer. “I can’t say I’ve gotten around to patenting that yet.”

“Well, I would suggest that you do so at the earliest,” says Albus. “It’s a brilliant method. Very efficient. It would serve to save time, money, and certainly a sizeable portion of the salamander population.”

“Look, I’m flattered,” says Vandermeer. He feels caught off-guard, out of his element in this bizarre intersection of his professional and personal pursuits. He supposes there has always been an overlap, but it’s easy to feel disarmed by this pretty young thing with the pixie blue eyes, gazing at him imploringly from across the table, intent in his attention despite something about him seeming far away and unreachable. “But I want you to ask yourself this -- is this really the place? Is now really the time?”

“Could there be a more clandestine setting?” asks Albus. “I’ve read the Ironbelly takes utmost pride in its client confidentiality.”

“Yes, but that’s for fucking,” says Vandermeer. “Not impromptu magic lessons, if that’s what you want.”

Redness blooms over Albus’ cheeks and Vandermeer can’t hold back a smile.

“Unless you’re here to offer me career advice,” Vandermeer carries on. “Or you’re a salamander conservationist. I wouldn’t know.”

Albus drinks his Wizard’s Brew. Vandermeer watches the way his throat moves as he swallows, chin up as he downs the last bit of the drink.

“I’m very sorry,” says Albus, as he sets down the empty glass. “What would be a good time and place?”

Vandermeer considers it. The blue blood splatter glyphs are fresh in his mind, almost an afterimage in his eyes.

“Now is a good time,” he says. “But not here.”

 

**6.**

They’re under the smothering vastness of the sky again, the stars still unseen in the overcast. The doors to the club close behind them like flittering shadows, the panels dissolving smoothly into the seemingly impenetrable blackness of the building.

Vandermeer holds his hand out. Albus takes a moment before he places his pale, skinny hand in Vandermeer’s much larger one. Something curls in Vandermeer’s belly, something like hunger, but there’s also a certain sense of disquiet he can’t seem to quell. The Ironbelly Communication Contract weighs heavy in his coat pocket, hastily crumpled into a ball as an afterthought.

“So what are you looking for, really?” asks Vandermeer.

Albus closes his eyes. “I may have made an awful mistake.”

The _crack_ of their disapparition is loud in the still darkness.

 

**7.**

The oil-green lights in Vandermeer’s home are dim when he apparates in with Albus, before they gently turn up to a brightness that still borders on the precipice of gloomy. Albus throws a glance around his house, takes in the shelves of books and potions and other various magical paraphernalia, the cages of pixies and salamanders, and the large wooden casket standing upright against the wall near a wrought-iron bedframe.

Albus smiles at the sight of it, distant and tinged with an empty bliss. “Necromancy, I see.”

“No,” says Vandermeer, walking up to the casket and opening its lid. “This is my liquor cabinet. I’m not yet feeling up to having the Ministry knocking at my door.”

Bottles and glasses shift themselves around inside the casket, pour Vandermeer his poison. Albus sits, legs crossed on the settee, hands curled on his lap. He’s put his wand away now, Vandermeer notices, as he sits next to him with his drink in hand.

A moment passes.

“How do you break --” Albus starts, before his voice cracks pitifully. He tries again. “How do you break a blood troth?”

 

**8.**

“That depends on so many things,” says Vandermeer. “There’s so many variables and determinants. I couldn’t give you a common remedy, it’s not fucking Mumblemumps.”

Albus nods. “Understood. What are the variables and determinants?”

“There’s an entire gamut of things to consider,” says Vandermeer. “How old were the contractors? How long had they known each other at the time of drawing blood? Were they family? Lovers? What were the catalytic parameters of their bloods? What motivated the pact? What motivates the intent to destroy it? How old are the contractors now? Do they both regret it? What were the consequences of this blood pact? Are external influences responsible for the pact or its destruction? Hell, sometimes it’s about the wand cores, blood troths aren’t popular enough for the wizarding world to --”

He stops. There’s a loud whirring buzz emanating from Albus.

Albus looks startled. Then he starts digging in his vest, and pulls out the Predilector. Its needle is spinning, loud and ridiculously fast, with all the fury of a weathervane caught in a tornado.

 

**9.**

“Do you need a moment?”

“Yes,” says Albus. Vandermeer can see his hand shaking where it cradles the Predilector. “Thank you.”

So Vandermeer drinks in silence, the house quiet save for the whirring and the gentle noise of mute cornish pixies throwing themselves against the bars of their gilded cage.

The whirring fades into background noise. It only returns to Vandermeer’s attention when it’s suddenly muffled, and he turns to see Albus has tucked it back into his vest again. His eyes are wet and red-rimmed, and when he speaks, his voice quavers.

“I think,” says Albus. There’s a certain defiant resolution to his voice despite the tremble. “I’d like to avail your services, for the time being.”

Something about this is improper, but the Redwood was never known for his kindness. Still, he sticks to protocol and takes the Ironbelly contract out of his coat pocket, and smoothes out the paper. He holds out a hand and retrieves a homing quill from his table.

 

**10.**

“What would you like to have done to you?”

“I would like to be hurt.”

“To what extent?”

“Nothing that should fall short of destroying me.”

“What the hell are your limits?”

“I no longer have any.”

 

**11.**

Albus is skinny and pale, pale enough that his blood pools visibly under his skin where Vandermeer grasps him, the rougher touches already beginning to bruise. His clothes sit neatly folded in a pile upon the settee, from when Vandermeer had made him undress himself and Albus had seemed almost mindless in his obedience.

Vandermeer tightens his grip around Albus’ throat, keeping him pinned to the wall with his feet off the ground, his other hand supporting him to keep from accidentally murdering the boy. Albus’ cock is half-hard and his hands twitch where they press limply against the surface of the wall, and his struggling to breathe seems more instinctual than intentional.

Albus draws in a deep, shuddering breath when Vandermeer releases him, his handprints already a deep maroon around his throat. Albus puts up absolutely no resistance when Vandermeer knots his fingers in his hair and pushes him to his knees, before grabbing his hand and twisting it back far enough to border on the risk of broken bones.

And all Albus does is shake.

 

**12.**

With the third bite, Vandermeer draws blood. The familiar coppery, salty taste floods his mouth as he breaks skin, and there’s a sweetness to it, almost -- and it thrums with magic on his tongue.

It’s not the only time he draws blood. Later, Albus raises his hands in a silent offering when Vandermeer takes out his bloodletting knives. The Claret Siphon would be a better alternative if he were just aiming to extract some blood and get on with it, but that would hardly do this situation justice.

Albus stares at the ceiling, eyes half-lidded, as Vandermeer digs into his skin and sends rivulets of blood running down from the wound. He presses his mouth to the incision before he makes another, and thrusts into Albus with enough violence to make him scream.

He doesn’t.

 

**13.**

Vandermeer takes Albus on the floor, on all fours, on his back and bent almost in double, up against the wall with his legs wrapped around Vandermeer like an anchor, and then on the floor again -- but this time in a puddle of his own blood (Vandermeer knows how much is too much, and this falls just shy of hemmorhaging him dangerously).

Albus lies there, pliant and malleable, lets himself be pulled and pushed into position like a ragdoll, his shivering the only indicator that Vandermeer isn’t just fucking a very warm corpse. When he makes eye contact with Vandermeer it’s through an inscrutable veil, like Albus is looking right through him, or irrecoverably lost in some world far removed from this one.

Vandermeer itches for response. It feels like an affront. He reassures himself he’d always been good with healing spells, and takes Albus’ right hand in his, and presses a kiss to each of his knuckles.

And then he wrenches his wrist out of position in one swift move, breaking through bone. And all Albus does is let his eyes flutter closed, his back arching slightly from the floor.

 

**14.**

Vandermeer climaxes twice, once in Albus’ mouth, and the second time over the shallow cuts on his belly. He’s on round three, with one hand in Albus’ hair, his wand in the other, and fucking up into Albus as he remains straddling Vandermeer, supported by a suspension charm. And Albus is still looking through him, and in the frenzy of his approaching orgasm coupled with an irrational, utterly unprofessional craving for a reaction, Vandermeer presses the tip of his wand into the hollow of Albus’ throat.

“Don’t make me use the Cruciatus curse,” he breathes, voice dragging through gravel and rock. He knows he wouldn’t ever, that that would be more trouble than it was worth, but the thought -- the thought that this might just jerk a response out of his submissive, is nearly enough to justify the threat.

Albus tilts his head, offering himself to the wand.

“F-fuck that,” stutters Vandermeer. “I’ll use the fucking Killing Curse, don’t think it’d make a bloody difference, would it.”

And Albus gives him a dreamy little smile.

And now, now Vandermeer doesn’t even want to get off a third time. He releases the suspension charm, and lets Albus crumple to the bed before pulling away. His insides feel cold as ice, cold as the dead, cold as though his lungs have been hollowed out and his chest cavity filled with the deepest frost.

“I knew we should have had a safeword,” he mutters. “Could have really used one about now.”

 

**15.**

Vandermeer cleans up in silence. Albus lies idly on the bed where he’d left him, and watches him work, follows the trail of his wand as he walks around casting Scouring charms. Albus says nothing as Vandermeer sits next to him on the bed and mends his cuts and broken bones, though he does close his eyes when Vandermeer kisses his healed knuckles again.

He sounds almost absent when he finally speaks, a frown furrowing his brows. “I don’t recall asking that you stop.”

“Yes, well, your demands are a little over my payment plan.”

“Oh yes,” says Albus. “Lest I forget. How much do I owe you?”

“You don’t owe me a goddamned thing. Maybe just some fucking sleep for the both of us.”

Albus hums affirmatively, voice raw in his throat. It’s only after he falls asleep that Vandermeer realizes the Predilector is now as quiet as the grave.

 

**16.**

Vandermeer awakens to sunlight streaming in through his windows and onto his face, his dusty old curtains fastened out of the way. It’s unsightly and a right menace, and he swears under his breath as he pulls himself out of direct sunlight range, blindly groping for his wand on the dresser. The first thing he does when he does find it is to curtain the goddamn windows again, before he falls back down onto the bed.

And then he realizes his house smells of tea and toast, in the warmest, most delicious way.

 

**17.**

“You made me breakfast,” says Vandermeer, bemused.

“Hardly,” says Albus. He’s dressed again, and if Vandermeer wasn’t certain the sun had struck him partially blind, he’d go as far as to say Albus even looks less haunted than he had wreathed in the shadows of the Ironbelly. “I merely gave the bread from your pantry a decent toasting and put on the kettle. Hardly a balanced start to the day, but to be fair, it is two in the afternoon.”

“That’s still breakfast,” says Vandermeer, pulling up a chair at the kitchen counter. The Predilector sits on the wooden surface, gleaming gold in the sunlight, silent and still. Albus gestures with his wand and glides a plateful of toast over to Vandermeer, and pours him a steaming cup of tea.

“You’ve been reading my books,” Vandermeer observes, taking in the volumes of his research lying open and bookmarked upon his reading table. “I doubt you found anything for a blood troth, however.”

Albus glances at the Predilector, its needle firmly pointed eastwards. “That might be a problem of the past,” he says. “But I did find some excellent material on the digestive adaptabilities of sanguivorous Animagi, as well as your unfinished work on the magical utility value of Dragon’s Blood. I would perhaps, if you might permit me one day, like to finish it. I believe there must be more uses than previously documented.”

His kitchen is sunnier than it has been in many years, and the scent of English Breakfast and buttered bread hangs softly in the air. And yet, Vandermeer remembers the vacancy of Albus’ smile when he’d threatened to kill him on a ill-conceived whim. It makes his heart feel frostbitten.

Still, Albus looks brighter now, with a little bounce in his step and a strange air of cheery resignation, like he’s just discovered the answer to an ancient, unanswered riddle and is now the bearer of its fatal but enthralling secret. He picks up the Predilector and gives it one final glance before pocketing it again, and steps out of the kitchen door of Vandermeer’s house into his backyard.

“If you would ever like to collaborate on academic pursuits, please do write,” says Albus. His auburn hair is a chestnut red in the sunshine, and Vandermeer can see the inklings of bruises around his neck in the places he’d missed while fixing him up last night. Clearly, Albus hadn’t taken the trouble to finish the job himself. The blotches are purple now, and Vandermeer finds himself thinking of his book of cornish bloodstains, still lying in repose and spelling out -- what exactly? What had any of this changed? What had been the foretold potential, the destiny the blood glyphs had wrangled into being? Vandermeer knows that as the sun sets, he would find himself heading down Knockturn Alley again, into the maw of the Ironbelly, where he’d break and make a few men in the warped image of their desires. He might be paid for it. And as always, he’d spend quite a few of those Galleons buying blood, sometimes in still-living vessels, to pore over in his own time.

He shields his eyes against the sunlight as he steps over the threshold of his kitchen door. “Where do I write to?” he asks. “Not that I would see a need --”

“I’m thinking Austria, or Hungary,” replies Albus, voice airy. The Predilector is in his hand again, and he offers it a moment’s consideration. “Perhaps Belgium. Address it to my full name, if you will -- Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore. In the general vicinity of Europe. It will always find me.”

And Albus disapparates with a crack that sounds almost magnificent in its finality.

 

_fin_


End file.
